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Dirty Shame, A
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 15 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by: John Waters
Directed by: John Waters
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 24, 2004
DVD: June 14, 2005
Running Time: 89 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: NC-17 for pervasive sexual content
Starring Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Isaak, Selma Blair, Suzanne Shepherd, Mink Stole, Susan Allenback, and Paul DeBoy
Rude, joyous and full of sexual anarchy, this John Waters comedy has a generous heart and a dirty mind. (Fine Line Features)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Cecil B. DeMented Female Trouble Hairspray Pecker
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
A Dirty Shame is certainly dirty, and maybe it's even a shame. But this is the John Waters we've come to know and cherish, and that alone is cause to celebrate.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
This raucously gritty and high-spirited film could scarcely be bluer in terms of the language, but from Waters it comes as a gust of fresh air.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Returns to the wicked mix of transgression and positivity epitomized by "Pecker" and "Hairspray."
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
John Waters may not be a great filmmaker, but he's usually onto something, and A Dirty Shame is onto something big.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
A genuine cri de couer in the director’s long-running battle against the forces of censorship and a banal societal (and cinematic) status quo. And for those reasons along it deserves to be seen.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
A big, lascivious punch line about America's peculiar, embarrassed, hypocritical relationship with sex.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Shame is a welcome reminder that sex is sometimes too ridiculous to take so seriously.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It may not be art, but A Dirty Shame is shameless fun.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
A Dirty Shame is Waters unleashed, and wicked, kinky fun for anyone except the twits who rated it NC-17.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
John Waters has returned to trashy form with what is unquestionably his most outrageous film since those heady "Pink Flamingos" days.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
With big Hollywood movies getting glossier and more mechanical, and indie movies increasingly mistaking drabness for seriousness, we need Waters' sub-B-movie aesthetic more now than ever.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
You can only kick against it so long before you succumb to its sheer energy and verve. Waters and company simply have too much fun for some of it not to reach out and touch you through the movie screen. If you can stand the pace, you'll likely leave happy.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
All trash, all all the time, a run-on burlesque of lust.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Tends to run low on steam well before the end, though Waters gamely tries to pump things up with filthy novelty tunes and clips from old stag films.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Frequently hilarious but ultimately is a protracted one-joke affair that strays into undisciplined chaos.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Despite its exuberant perversities, Waters’s take on erotomania is almost quaint.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Waters's far-from-phallocratic sexual democracy is not so much hilarious as goofy and more rousing than arousing.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Embracing ugliness, lousy production values, and borderline hysteria as virtues, A Dirty Shame is one for the cultists, a proud retreat back into the sandbox of sexual juvenilia, a potty-mouthed manifesto from an elder statesman of shock.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
I love what his films stand for -- inclusivity, tolerance, liberation and fun -- but I’ve always felt about his movies as I do about Monty Python: Half an hour is a riot; an hour and half starts to be a chore.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
A Dirty Shame isn't dirty fun. It's the perv "Footloose."
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Never mean-spirited, A Dirty Shame has some big laughs, but it's a one-joke movie that shows its strain well before the finish line.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The humor is more childish than raunchy, but it's interesting to see that becoming a big-time Broadway impresario hasn't led Waters to sell out his affection for gross-out gags.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Waters's rude, lewd and occasionally nude extended skit takes a simple idea and beats it limp.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It can hardly help but outrage at least some of the people some of the time.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
I object to A Dirty Shame not because it is offensive - to do so would be another way of congratulating Mr. Waters for his bogus daring - but because it is boring. Beyond offering a catalog of interesting practices and lampooning their dedicated practitioners, the movie has very little to say about sex.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
John Waters is back with this awfully bawdy, never sexy, rarely funny, actually boring, one-note sex comedy.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Melissa Levine
The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Phil Hall
Easily the most surprising comedy of his career. The surprise: it's not funny.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Monotonous, repetitive and sometimes wildly wrong in what it hopes is funny.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Tracey Ullman is a bright spot in an otherwise sordid, murky production.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Steven Winn
Squanders its comic capital on redundant bits about her perplexed family and secret society of fellow sex addicts.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Hank D. gave it a9:
The kind of film that so few ever dare to make, yet is SO needed to be seen by today's deeply mortal public. But the public won't see it and you'd probably think it was juvenile and dumb anyway (which it is). But it is an amazingly terrific and so very good piece of heartfelt film-making.
Alison R. gave it a10:
Another hilarious film from John Waters. The memory of Tracey Ullman's frantic cavortings still makes me crack up laughing. Don't expect anything deep or highbrow, though -- and this is not a film for people of a delicate nature!
Jeff L. gave it a 6:
The very fact that John Waters - the Sultan of Sleaze, the Prince of Bad Taste, the man who made a star of 300-pound transvestite Divine by making her devour dog poop - is working in NC-17 territory should alone be reason for long-time fans to rejoice, especially those who have fretted over how comparatively tame his work has been since the mainstream hit Hairspray in 1988. Somehow, though, the chutzpah displayed in breakthrough films like Pink Flamingoes, Multiple Maniacs, and Female Trouble (not to mention terrific later films like Serial Mom and the underrated Cecil B. Demented) has given way to an ultimately tiresome parade of grotesque characters and silly sight gags. The premise is funny enough - how a town becomes radically divided into two warring factions, one proudly asexual, the other delighted in every manner of perversion and laciviousness. Tracey Ullman (last seen to really great effect in Woody Allen's Small-Time Crooks) is fearless, sexy, and funny as a repressed wife whose head injury turns her into a brazen sex maniac. I also really liked Elvis-coiffed Chris Isaak as her confused husband and Selma Blair (with HUGE Russ Meyer-sized jugs) as their stripper daughter. And the soundtrack full of rockabilly and novelty songs is a lot of fun. But in the end, the film becomes frantic and desperate. Much as I wanted to love this, there really isn't much "there" there.
Walter E. gave it a 0:
What happened to John Waters? This is absolutely his worst film to date and the worst film I've seen this year. It's a complete train wreck. It's two hours of people running around yelling. With an exception or two, it's not even funny, which is extremely rare for a Waters' script. Waters strands the actors by giving them almost nothing to do except yell his "hilarious" lines into the camera, dialogue none of them seem to believe in. Not one actor delivers a line with the crazed gusto and lunatic conviction of Divine. Or even Kathleen Turner. They just seem embarrassed and I felt embarassed for them. Only Tracey Ullman comes off pretty much unscathed here. I laughed at how adept she was at changing in and out of clothes stolen from neighbors' washlines; it's the only sexy thing in the movie. That's really it as far as performances go. Why is the movie so visually ugly and indifferently filmed? And what is Waters doing with digital effects? They make an already ludicrous movie even worse (what's with the squirrels?). It pains me to write all this down, as I've been a Waters fan for almost 20 years, but this movie really feels like the end of the line to me. Two warning signs: First, the opening titles are crowded with executive producers' credits, so you have to wonder how much groupthink went into putting this disaster together and whether Waters' was made to work against his better instincts. Second, the NC-17 rating is like one of Waters' beloved William Castle gimmicks like "Emergo" or his own "Odorama": it's a seal of approval for die-hard Waters fans, who will be disappointed when they sit down to find there's almost no movie on the screen. Finally, I'm all for bad taste, but I thought Waters used Suzanne Shepherd and his old friend Mink Stole cruelly. Their performances are painfully forced; they're not just repressed, crazy grotesques, they're barely recognizable as members of the human race and Waters stacks the deck too high against them. It became painful to watch them. Overall, I think Waters needs to start over without corporate money and "name" actors. Also, I think his discernment on the quality of his scripts has been faulty. His last few pictures demonstrate that what may be funny on the page doesn't always automatically translate to funny on the screen.
Matt M gave it an 8:
One of the funniest films of the year. Wickedly, raucously entertaining. John Waters at his twisted best.
JB Young gave it a 7:
Starts funny but ends weak. One scene early in the film had my wife and I in tears we laughed so hard. Can't remember the last time I could say that about a film, maybe Serial Mom.
